The 40th anniversary Mostly Mozart Festival presents the world premiere of a new
full-evening dance, Mozart Dances, from acclaimed choreographer Mark Morris in the
New York State Theater on Thursday, August 17, Friday, August 18, and Saturday,
August 19 at 8:00 p.m. Commissioned by Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts, New
Crowned Hope, and the Barbican Centre, Mozart Dances features the Mark Morris Dance
Group (MMDG) dancing to Mozart's Piano Concerto Nos. 11 and 27 and the Sonata in D
major for Two Pianos, as performed by pianists Emanuel Ax and Yoko Nozaki, with the
Mostly Mozart Festival Orchestra conducted by Music Director Louis Langrée.

Mozart Dances marks the return of Mr. Morris and his company to Mozart's music for
the first time since 1988's Fugue and Fantasy. Mr. Morris also directed the Mozart
opera Le nozze di Figaro in Brussels in 1991, and choreographed the opera Idomeneo
for Peter Sellars at Glyndebourne in 2003, as well as a solo dance for himself,
Rondo, in 1994. "When I hear Mozart I do hear dance," Mr. Morris stated earlier this
year in the Times (London). "I maintain that Baroque and early Classical music is
almost all dance rhythms. What's more of a dance than Così fan tutte?" And,
referring to the piano music in Mozart Dances, "It's really amazing and shocking
great music. And what you think you hear isn't necessarily what is played. There is
very often something implied but not actually sounded in his music, and that's
something that thrills me."

Mozart Dances features three original, commissioned backdrops by Howard Hodgkin,
costumes by Martin Pakledinaz, and lighting by James F. Ingalls. Mr. Morris and
MMDG, the leading modern dance ensemble that features live music at every
performance, have delighted Mostly Mozart audiences since the company's festival
debut in 2002 with works performed to music of Handel (L'Allegro, il Penseroso ed Il
Moderato), Monteverdi (I Don't Want to Love), Schumann (V), and others.

Tickets, priced at $25, $40, $55, and $75, are available at the Avery Fisher Hall
Box Office (and, two weeks prior, the New York State Theater Box Office), by calling
CenterCharge at 212-721-6500, or online at www.lincolncenter.org<http://www.lincolncenter.org/> .

The Mostly Mozart Festival is sponsored by the Jerome L. Greene Foundation and The
Peter Jay Sharp Foundation. The Festival's Corporate Sponsor is Bank of America.

Mozart Dances is one of four Lincoln Center commissions for the 40th anniversary
Mostly Mozart Festival and 250th anniversary of Mozart's birth that seek to explore
the great composer's connections to today's world. Others include a new, modern
staging of the Mozart opera Zaide, directed by the contemporary provocateur Peter
Sellars (August 9, 11-12); a new violin concerto by the dynamic Finnish composer
Magnus Lindberg (August 22-23); and Enlightenment, a multimedia digital art
installation on the Avery Fisher Hall façade that uses artificial intelligence on 10
computers to analyze and perform the final coda of Mozart's "Jupiter" Symphony (July
27-August 26).

Mark Morris was born on August 29, 1956, in Seattle, Washington, where he studied as
a young man with Verla Flowers and Perry Brunson. In the early years of his career,
he performed with Lar Lubovitch, Hannah Kahn, Laura Dean, Eliot Feld, and the Koleda
Balkan Dance Ensemble. He formed the Mark Morris Dance Group in 1980, and has since
created more than 120 works for the company. From 1988-1991, he was Director of
Dance at the Théâtre Royal de la Monnaie in Brussels, the national opera house of
Belgium. Among the works created during his tenure were three evening-length
dances: The Hard Nut; L'Allegro, il Penseroso ed il Moderato; and Dido and Aeneas.
In 1990, he founded the White Oak Dance Project with Mikhail Baryshnikov. Morris is
also much in demand as a ballet choreographer. He has created six works for the San
Francisco Ballet since 1994 and received commissions from American Ballet Theatre,
and the Boston Ballet, among others. His work is in the repertory of the Geneva
Ballet, New Zealand Ballet, Houston Ballet, English National Ballet, and The Royal
Ballet, Covent Garden. Morris is noted for his musicality-he has been described as
"undeviating in his devotion to music"-and for his "ability to conjure so many
contradictory styles and emotions." He has worked extensively in opera, directing
and choreographing productions for the New York City Opera, English National Opera,
and The Royal Opera, Covent Garden. Morris was named a Fellow of the MacArthur
Foundation in 1991. He has received honorary doctorates from The Boston
Conservatory of Music, The Juilliard School, Long Island University, Pratt
Institute, Bowdoin College, Bard College, Bates College, and George Mason
University. Morris is the subject of a biography by Joan Acocella (Farrar, Straus &
Giroux). In 2001, Marlowe & Company published Mark Morris' L'Allegro, il Penseroso
ed il Moderato: A Celebration, a volume of photographs and critical essays.

The Mark Morris Dance Group, now celebrating its 25th anniversary, was formed in
1980 and gave its first concert that year in New York City. The company's touring
schedule steadily expanded to include cities both in the U.S. and in Europe, and in
1986 it made its first national television program for the PBS series Dance in
America. In 1988, MMDG was invited to become the national dance company of Belgium,
and spent three years in residence at the Théâtre Royal de la Monnaie in Brussels.
The company returned to the United States in 1991 as one of the world's leading
dance companies, performing across the U.S. and at major international festivals.
It has maintained and strengthened its ties to several cities around the world, most
notably Berkeley, CA, where Cal Performances presents the company in two annual
seasons, including engagements of The Hard Nut each December. It appears regularly
in Boston, MA; Fairfax, VA; Seattle, WA; Urbana, IL; at the Jacob's Pillow Dance
Festival in Becket, MA; and at BAM in Brooklyn, NY. MMDG made its debut at the
Mostly Mozart Festival in 2002 and at the Tanglewood Music Festival in 2003 and has
since returned to both festivals annually. The company's London seasons have
garnered two Laurence Olivier Awards. MMDG is noted for its commitment to live
music, a feature of every performance on its full international touring schedule
since 1996. Cellist Yo Yo Ma has frequently collaborated with MMDG; their projects
include the 1997 Emmy Award-winning film Falling Down Stairs and the 2002 dance
Kolam, created for The Silk Road Project in collaboration with Indian composer Zakir
Hussain and jazz pianist Ethan Iverson of The Bad Plus. MMDG's film and television
projects include Dido and Aeneas, The Hard Nut, and two documentaries for the U.K.'s
South Bank Show. In fall 2001, MMDG opened the Mark Morris Dance Center in
Brooklyn, NY, the company's first permanent headquarters in the U.S., housing
rehearsal space for the dance community, outreach programs for local children, as
well as a school offering dance classes to students of all ages. Altria Group is the
lead sponsor for MMDG's 25th Anniversary Season. Metlife Foundation is MMDG's 25th
Anniversary National Tour Sponsor.

Pianist Emanuel Ax captured public attention in 1974 when, at age 25, he won the
first Arthur Rubinstein International Piano Competition in Tel Aviv. In 1975 he won
the Michaels Award of Young Concert Artists and, four years later, took the coveted
Avery Fisher Prize. He has been an exclusive Sony Classical recording artist since
1987, and his third volume in the recording cycle of Haydn Piano Sonatas received a
Grammy Award in February 2004. During the 2005-06 season, Mr. Ax served as
Pianist-in-Residence with the Berlin Philharmonic, performing with the orchestra and
Sir Simon Rattle in Berlin and New York and in chamber music performances with
musicians from the orchestra over the course of the season. Other highlights of Mr.
Ax's 2005-06 season included a U.S. tour with the National Symphony and Leonard
Slatkin; recitals in London, Vienna, and at New York's Carnegie Hall; and a duo
recital tour with Richard Stoltzman. Mr. Ax resides in New York City with his wife,
the pianist Yoko Nozaki.

Pianist Yoko Nozaki was born in Tokyo and attended the Toho School of Music prior to
her family's move to the United States when she was 12. She entered The Juilliard
School in 1966, won the Concert Artists Guild Award in 1970, and made her New York
debut in 1972. She has been featured at the Mostly Mozart, Ravinia, Ojai, Blossom,
and Tanglewood Festivals. Ms. Nozaki has also been a featured soloist with the
Brandenburg Ensemble and, like her husband, pianist Emanuel Ax, is a featured guest
artist of the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center. In addition to her work as a
performer, she is the director of the Music Plant, a Japanese-based label. In the
wake of their acclaimed duo-piano concert at Carnegie Hall in 1996, Mr. Ax and Ms.
Nozaki have performed together as part of the Distinguished Artist Series at the
92nd Street Y and the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and have been duo-soloists with
the symphony orchestras of St. Louis, Minnesota, Detroit, and Cleveland.

Louis Langrée was appointed Music Director of the Mostly Mozart Festival in 2003.
Maestro Langrée's upcoming engagements include the Detroit Symphony Orchestra (July
15, 2006), his New York opera debut conducting Mozart's Zaide at the 2006 Mostly
Mozart Festival, Gluck's Iphigenie en Tauride at the Lyric Opera of Chicago
(September 2006), the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra (November 2006), Dallas Symphony
(February 2007), and his Metropolitan Opera debut leading Iphigenie en Tauride
during the 2007-08 season, as well as return visits to the City of Birmingham
Symphony Orchestra and Sinfonica di Milano Giuseppe Verdi. The 2005-06 season
marked the end of Mr. Langrée's five-year tenure as Music Director of the Orchestre
Philharmonique de Liège. In addition to concerts in Belgium, he conducted the
orchestra on tour in Europe including performances in Paris, Vienna, and Geneva.
Other engagements last season include return visits to the London Philharmonic and
City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestras and his debut appearances with the Sinfonica
di Milano Giuseppe Verdi and Vienna and Scottish Chamber Orchestras. Mr. Langrée's
recording of Mozart's Mass in C minor with Le Concert d'Astrée will be released by
Virgin Classics later this year.

The Mostly Mozart Festival Orchestra is the resident orchestra of the Mostly Mozart
Festival. At the 2006 Festival, the Orchestra will make its debut in the pit of the
New York State Theater, performing the music for Mark Morris' Mozart Dances, as well
as concerts in Avery Fisher Hall under conductors Louis Langrée, Osmo Vänskä,
Douglas Boyd, and Christian Zacharias. Over the years, the Orchestra has toured to
such notable festivals and venues as Ravinia, Great Woods, Tanglewood, the Tilles
Center, and the Kennedy Center. Conductors who made their New York debuts leading
the Mostly Mozart Festival Orchestra include Charles Dutoit, Leonard Slatkin, David
Zinman, and Edo de Waart.

Now in its 40th year, Lincoln Center's Mostly Mozart Festival-America's first indoor
summer music festival-was launched as an experiment in 1966 as Midsummer Serenades:
A Mozart Festival and devoted its first two seasons exclusively to the music of
Mozart. Renamed the Mostly Mozart Festival in 1970, the event is now a New York
institution and continues to broaden its focus to include works by Mozart's
predecessors, contemporaries, and related successors. In addition to concerts by
the Mostly Mozart Festival Orchestra, Mostly Mozart now includes concerts by
visiting period-instrument ensembles, chamber orchestras and ensembles, and
acclaimed soloists, as well as staged music presentations, opera productions, dance,
and film. Soloists including Itzhak Perlman, Pinchas Zukerman, Alicia de Larrocha,
Richard Stoltzman, Emanuel Ax, and Garrick Ohlsson have had long associations with
the Festival. Mezzo-soprano Cecilia Bartoli, flutist James Galway, soprano Elly
Ameling, and pianist Mitsuko Uchida all made their U.S. debuts at the Mostly Mozart
Festival.

The Mostly Mozart Festival is sponsored by the Jerome L. Greene Foundation and The
Peter Jay Sharp Foundation. The Festival's Corporate Sponsor is Bank of America.

The Mostly Mozart Festival is also made possible by Rita E. and Gustave M. Hauser,
Sherman Fairchild Foundation, the Hess Foundation, Inc., The Shubert Foundation,
Susan and Morris Mark, The Eleanor Naylor Dana Charitable Trust, Mr. and Mrs.
Michael E. Gellert, Ann and Gordon Getty Foundation, Paul Newman, David and Melanie
Niemiec, Charles E. Culpeper Foundation, S.H. and Helen R. Scheuer Family
Foundation, and Friends of Mostly Mozart. Public support is provided by the New York
State Council on the Arts.

Major Endowment support is provided by The Hauser Foundation.

Movado is an Official Sponsor of Lincoln Center, Inc.

WNBC/WNJU are Official Broadcast Partners of Lincoln Center, Inc.

Continental Airlines is the Official Airline of Lincoln Center, Inc.

"Summer at Lincoln Center" is sponsored by Diet Pepsi.

Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts (LCPA) serves three primary roles: presenter
of superb artistic programming, national leader in arts and education and community
relations, and manager of the Lincoln Center campus. As a presenter of over 400
events annually, LCPA's programs include American Songbook, Great Performers,
Lincoln Center Festival, Lincoln Center Out of Doors, Midsummer Night Swing, the
Mostly Mozart Festival, and Live From Lincoln Center

Lincoln Center is committed to providing and improving accessibility for people with
disabilities. For information, call the Department of Programs and Services for
People with Disabilities at 212-875-5375.

Lincoln Center Presents the 40th Anniversary Mostly Mozart Festival

Thursday, August 17, 2006 at 8:00

Friday, August 18, 2006 at 8:00

Saturday, August 19, 2006 at 8:00

New York State Theater

Mark Morris Dance Group

Mark Morris, choreographer

Mostly Mozart Festival Orchestra

Louis Langrée, conductor

Emanuel Ax, piano

Yoko Nozaki, piano

Howard Hodgkin, sets

Martin Pakledinaz, costumes

James F. Ingalls, lighting

Mozart Dances (World premiere; commissioned by Lincoln Center for the Performing
Arts, Inc.; New Crowned Hope; and the Barbican Centre)

Tickets for the Mostly Mozart Festival are available at the Avery Fisher Hall and
Rose Theater box offices, by calling CenterCharge at 212-721-6500, or online at
www.lincolncenter.org <http://www.lincolncenter.org/> .

Who is online

Users browsing this forum: No registered users and 1 guest

You cannot post new topics in this forumYou cannot reply to topics in this forumYou cannot edit your posts in this forumYou cannot delete your posts in this forumYou cannot post attachments in this forum